Valheim leaves early access on 9 September 2026, and the Deep North stops being a placeholder and becomes a real biome. Every server group is asking the same question in chat right now: does the old world still work, or does everyone have to start over?
The answer comes down to one rule, and you can check it against your own map in about a minute. Nothing gets deleted either way, and your server can hold both worlds at the same time.
The rule that decides it
Valheim never regenerates terrain it has already built. The first time any player loads a zone, the game writes that terrain into the world file and treats it as final. New biomes and new terrain from a later update land only where nobody has been yet.
Iron Gate draws that line in its own FAQ: an unexplored area is one where no player has set foot, "including a radius of about 500 metres". The footprint is wider than it feels. One lone longship trip along the northern ice counts, and it counts for half a kilometre either side of the route.
Two files make up your world, and the split is the whole story:
<name>.fwlis tiny and holds the seed and the world's identity<name>.dbholds every zone anyone has loaded, plus buildings, chests and terrain edits
The seed decides what the map could be. The .db decides how much of that is already locked in. The Deep North lands in the gap between the two.
Check your own map before deciding
You do not have to guess. Load your character on the existing world and open the map. The fog of war is an accurate record of what has been written down.
- The far north is still black. Nobody has been there, those zones are unwritten, and the first longship to arrive after the update finds genuine Deep North. Keep your world.
- The far north is uncovered. That terrain is in the
.dbalready and it stays exactly as it is. No update overwrites it. - Someone sailed up once and turned back. Look at the width of the cleared strip. Everything within roughly 500 metres of that route is baked in. The rest of the north is still open.
Ask everyone in the group, not just yourself. One player's exploration is written into the shared world file for all of you.
What Iron Gate actually promises
Their position is short, and worth reading literally rather than hopefully:
- Old saves are untouched. They stay where you left them and you can keep playing them.
- Content that is fixed in the world, meaning terrain, buildings and dungeons, is applied only to previously unexplored areas.
- They still recommend starting over for the best experience of 1.0.
That last one is a recommendation, not a requirement. It exists because Iron Gate has not published a list of which 1.0 worldgen changes reach an old map outside the Deep North, so "start fresh" is the only answer that is true for every world.
Three ways to play launch week
Your server is not limited to one world, so this is less of a fork in the road than it looks.
Sail north on the map you already have. Right for a group with a base worth keeping and an unexplored north. Nothing to set up. Take the backup below and go.
A fresh world with the same Viking. Characters are stored separately from worlds in Valheim, so your existing character can walk into a brand new map fully geared. Whether you want that is a question about the group, not about the server.
Both worlds on one server. Where most groups land. Create the 1.0 world, play it, and point the server at the old map again whenever someone wants to visit the base. Neither world is overwritten, and you can go back and forth as often as you like.
Back up before the update reaches you
Do this first, while the old build is still what your server is running.
- Open your server in the control panel
- Go to Backups and create one
- In Worlds, use Download on your current world to keep an off-server copy of the
.fwland.dbpair
The panel backup covers the whole server. The download gives you a copy that no panel action can reach, and that is the one that saves you if launch week goes badly. There is more on backup habits and file locations in our guide to managing your Valheim world.
Create the Deep North world
The dedicated server takes no seed parameter, because Valheim keeps the seed inside the world file itself. That is why most guides tell you to build the map in your own client and move the files across. The panel writes the file for you instead.
- Open your server and select Worlds
- Click New world from seed
- Enter a World name. The panel accepts letters, digits, spaces, underscores and hyphens, caps the name at 20 characters, and rejects one that is already in use on this server
- Paste a Seed, or leave the field empty to get a random one. The dialog previews the numeric seed the game will use
- Leave Make it the active world ticked, or untick it to stage the world for later
- Click Create world
On a running server you get a restart prompt, and the restart is what applies the switch. Your previous world keeps its own entry and its own seed further down the list.
Would you rather roll the map in your own game first and check the spawn? Generate it in single player and use Upload world instead. The walkthrough is in uploading a Valheim world.
"Not generated" is the normal first state
A freshly created world is listed as Not generated until the server's first save. Valheim builds the terrain in memory and writes the world file on its first autosave, usually within 30 minutes of the first start. Until then the entry has no file size. That is expected, not an error.
Switching between worlds
Every world in the list has its own menu. Pick Make active there, then restart. That menu also carries Copy seed, Download and Delete world. Deletion is blocked on whichever world is currently active, so nobody can wipe the map the server is running right now.
One practical note: a restart gives Valheim a new join code every time. If your group switches worlds often, share the server's IP address instead of the code. Both are on the same connection card, and the difference is covered in joining your Valheim server.
What else changes at 1.0
- Mods will break. Iron Gate has never offered official mod support, and a plugin compiled for an older build usually takes the server down during startup rather than failing quietly. Plan a vanilla first week, then bring plugins back one at a time. The panel side is in our mod installation guide.
- More platforms, same crossplay. Xbox and PC are joined by PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2 at 1.0. Your server does not care which platform anyone plays on.
- The 10 player cap stands. Iron Gate still caps dedicated servers at 10 players. Going past that needs a server-side mod.
If something looks wrong
"A world with that name already exists." Every world on a server needs its own name, and the panel refuses to write over one that is already there. Rename the new world, or remove the old one first.
The server booted the old world anyway. The switch only applies on restart. Restart, then read the Current world card that sits above the list.
I sailed north and it is the old empty snow. Those zones were written before 1.0. A fresh world is the only fix.
The server will not start after the update. Check the Console tab. On launch day that is almost always a BepInEx plugin rather than the world.
Every Valheim server from SpillHosting includes the Worlds tab, backups and the mod browser, so both maps can sit side by side for as long as you want them. See the rest of what is included on our Valheim server hosting page.